


Round and Round

by deathmallow



Category: Timeless (TV 2016)
Genre: F/M, that night in sao paulo, yeah that one
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-29
Updated: 2018-05-29
Packaged: 2019-05-15 04:10:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,544
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14783345
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deathmallow/pseuds/deathmallow
Summary: "I ended up in a bar, in São Paulo, Brazil.  I was on my third drink when you walked in. You looked maybe five years older than you look now, uh, but no less...you looked good.  You told me your name.  You...you knew everything.  How my family died. That Rittenhouse was behind all of this.  You told me there was a way for me to stop them, and that to do it, I was gonna need your help, and that's when you handed me the journal. So Lucy...you started all of it."A time traveler from 2022 walks into a São Paulo bar in 2014.  The rest is history.





	Round and Round

**Author's Note:**

> I own nothing, as usual. Title from Imagine Dragons' "Round And Round".

_July 15th, 2022: Gulf Shores, Alabama_  
“I can’t help but think I’m missing something.” She flicked through the pages of the journal again, strangely unable to let it go.

“We’re as ready as we’re going to be,” Garcia told her. “The timeline loop adjustments for the Lifeboat are done. Let’s do this before anything more changes. You can make it to São Paulo now. It’ll be fine.” She felt his gaze on the journal--his old friend, come back around, wondered exactly what he thought.

She shook her head, frustrated with him. “What if I missed something? What if I said too much? Your memory’s incredible, Garcia, but it’s not eidetic. I imagine you could only remember so much of what was in there. And who knows exactly how much has changed while we’ve been writing it?” She’d tried to reread it a few weeks ago, hit the first reference to the Apollo 11 mission landing on the moon, and shook her head in dismay. Everyone knew there were only 2 Apollo missions before World War III broke out...didn’t they?

Then came the light pressure of his hands on her shoulders, thumbs kneading into the knots of tension there. She sighed, leaning back into it. “You’ve got to trust me to run with it. I wasn’t a college freshman needing everything spoon-fed to me.” 

“I made quite the impression, huh?”

She could hear the faint thread of laughter in his voice. “It was the perfect balance of informative, brilliant, and intriguing mystery.” He leaned down and dropped a soft kiss on her neck. “Exactly like the woman herself.”

She couldn’t help but smile, reaching a hand back to cup the back of his head, turning her face to his, kissing him. She couldn’t go without telling him, she decided. “Garcia,” she said quietly. “I’m pregnant.” It wasn’t like they’d been able to reliably get hold of birth control, and she’d found out years ago that even in a world with regular comforts, she was pretty sure that sex with Garcia Flynn would have swiftly been one of her favorite things anyway. Really, she was lucky they’d lasted this long without that particular complication.

She heard his swift, shuddering inhale, and fully turned to face him, fingers gripping his shirt. “I know. Or at least, I suspected.” Of course he did. He must have seen her mood swings, her nausea, her fatigue. He’d been through this before. Though that was when things were normal, and he and Lorena’s worries were about decorating a nursery, rather than worrying about running from an evil cult.

“Do you want…” God, fate was a bitch. She was about to go back to a man who’d just lost one wife and daughter, and here she was telling him he was about to be a father in a shithole world ravaged by Rittenhouse. Tears pricked at the corner of her eyes. _It’s not fair, it’s not fair._

He lifted his head, looked at her, and smoothed her hair off her forehead. “We should talk about it more after the mission,” he promised, and she could tell how shaken he was, how he probably still hadn’t come to terms with it despite his suspicions. He seemed to know she needed something more than him just being able to lock it down for the mission, and something softened in his expression. “But how could I not love them?”

“I know it’s not how you would have chosen.” At least with her, he’d been able to deliberately choose to let Lorena go. This was forcing his hand in letting go of Iris, and she could barely fathom trying to tell Wyatt, given that his own child was still an enigma to him. A girl--that was all Jessica would ever tell him.

He shook his head, exasperated. “Lucy, I’ve made my choices. I chose you, and obviously, nobody forced us to sleep together. Constantly.” She couldn’t help an awkward giggle at that, watching the corner of his mouth turn up in reply. 

“No complaints on this end.”

“Oh good.” He smirked at her, well pleased with himself. But then he was all business again. “We knew the risks.” He nodded to the journal. “Now please go give that to me, before Rittenhouse makes it even worse.”

She centered herself, breathing in, trying to find her own calm focus for a mission, especially this one. “What do I need to know?” Pleased at how steady her voice sounded. “Or...what haven’t you told me?”

He crouched down in front of her chair. “Three things. First: there was a bar, yes. But I blew you off. I’m afraid I was a bit rude about it, so I’ll apologize now.” The corner of his mouth tugged up in a smile. “I really started to pay attention when you killed a Rittenhouse agent--he’ll be in the alleyway leading back to the Rua Anjos, having tracked me down.” She hated him for how he managed the Portuguese accent with a flourish, even as it made her want to push him back on the mattress. Maybe the hormones had augmented her libido, but he did a great job of it in his own right. “Check your seven once you’re out the door.”

She took mental note of that. “Next?”

“Second.” He took her hands in his, looking at her, green eyes intent. “The bar is only about a five minute walk from the cathedral. The side door was left unlocked that night for whatever reason. And Lucy, I’m a man with very little faith in God that particular night, but well...it makes a better place to talk than a shithole bar.”

Part of her wanted to demand he explain more, but this was how it went. He wasn’t going to spoon-feed it to her either, and have it sound like she was doing it by rote. She’d have to figure it out as she went. “I’ve managed to get through to you before.” 

His wild and desperate eyes half-hidden in the shadows of a DC basement, one hand on the trigger and the other on the button of a detonator. Looking to her as if she was some kind of angel sent to save him, as if she’d been that person before. _I prayed to God for answers. And he led me here to this._

_What if he led you to me?_

“And what’s the third thing?”

He reached up, cradling her face in his hands, looking directly at her with those soft, gentle eyes, that way he had of looking right into her soul. That way that made her forget the exhaustion and the terror and the crappy surroundings they always found themselves in--in this private world between them, none of that mattered. “That I have faith in you. That I love you more than anything, and I’ll be waiting for you in the Lifeboat.” That was the rule. Someone always, _always_ stayed with the Lifeboat, with the engines running and a jump already programmed, so Rittenhouse couldn’t take it or destroy it. 

It wasn’t fair that their bed was only two steps away. Her response to that delayed the mission launch by an hour.

~~~~~~~~~~

_October 22, 2014, São Paulo, Brazil_  
The weight of the journal in her pocket reassured her as she walked into the bar, the bag with essentials clutched in her hand. Passport, money, ammunition, basic medical supplies: everything a man on the run would need to keep going for the next two years. The fact he’d made it this far, when he’d left his house in a hail of bullets, wounded and with nothing but his pajamas and a half-loaded gun, said plenty about Garcia Flynn’s resourcefulness and tenacity. Not that she wasn’t already familiar with it. Though she usually would term the tenacity as stubbornness.

A man that big was hard to miss. He sat at the bar, shoulders hunched over, a drink resting on the battered and sticky wood counter. The cheap tiki torches filled the air with a haze.

She knew better than to surprise him from behind, so she approached at an angle, seeing from that flicker of tense assessment that he was aware someone was there for him, but he just took another sip of his drink. She’d seen enough of him in the field over the years to know that wary alertness was just the prelude to leaping into action if need be, though. “Excuse me.”

He polished off half the drink, not turning his head, but looking at her from the corner of his eye anyway. “No, _senhorita_ , I don’t want to buy you a drink. Get lost.”

“I didn’t come this far to have a drink with you, Garcia Flynn.” Now something blazed to life, that tension fully realized, and he turned to look at her. She almost lost it at that. She’d see almost every expression possible on his face. Seen him enraged, determined, terrified, lost in pleasure, smug--God, had she seen that--sweet, soft, scarily cold and efficient, utterly dorkish. But she’d never seen this: a pure emptiness, blank and terrifying. Like nobody was home behind those eyes, and his reaction of keeping an eye on her, and now being ready to fight, was the simple robotics of muscle memory from a man who’d been a warrior and covert operative from the age of fifteen.

This man didn’t know her, and right now he was a cornered animal. But it caught her aback to see it, and a fear she hadn’t felt since they’d first met in the flames of the _Hindenburg_ stirred to life, an awareness that he was dangerous and lethal, and without his caring deeply about that journal stuffed in her pocket and the woman who wrote it, this man had no reason to give a shit about her and keep her alive if he thought she was a threat. 

The fact he didn’t go for his gun said plenty about his state of mind. He knocked back the rest of the drink. “So, I’m assuming you’re NSA. Are you supposed to bring me in alive or dead?” _Really, Garcia? This is you being super rude to me? Only a man that in love would be that sheepish about it. I mean, you actually kidnapped me in 1780 once, you threw shade at me as my mother’s puppet while you were sitting there in shackles, and now we’re to a place where you’re sorry you told me to take a hike rather than getting all giddy like a puppy at the sight of me?_

“I’m here about Rittenhouse.” Something flared to life in his eyes for a moment, a blaze of rage. “I’m not with them,” she hurried to clarify. This was all going wrong. He was too close, too familiar, mattered too much, and she couldn’t use any of the words she needed to win him over when all she wanted to do was wrap her arms around him, take him to a nearby bed and try to give him whatever comfort and hope she could.

 _He’s not yours yet,_ she reminded herself. Garcia, her Garcia, was there on the Lifeboat. Lorena had been murdered only two weeks ago. It would take him years to be able to let go. She couldn’t dare to offer her own husband that comfort when his dead first wife clung to him like a cloak. She knew him too well. Devastated and desperate as he was, he might even allow her to do it once she got through to him, but in the morning he’d feel like he had betrayed Lorena, and the last thing she needed was to push him into something that would give him yet another ghost to exorcise in their relationship. Besides, she remembered their first time together, and the excitement fluttering in her chest, that feeling of _Finally, oh God, finally, I’ve wanted this, and now you’re ready._ But he’d been well worth the wait. Maybe it was selfish, but she’d already given up so damn much that she wasn’t willing to sacrifice that. She--both herself now, and herself then--deserved to have Garcia in her bed that night as hers alone, full of love and hope, not sharing him with the memory of a night of desperation when all he really wanted right now was Lorena.

He sat there, still watching her. She knew that reaction from him too. That _I’m waiting and trying to not give anything away, but I don’t believe you_ patience of a tiger lying in wait. “My name is Lucy Preston--” No, not Preston-Flynn. She’d almost given away the game there. Shit. “I know about your family. About Lorena and Iris. That Rittenhouse killed them two weeks ago and pinned it on you.”

He looked at her fully now, eyes scanning her slowly from head to toe, something in his expression gradually waking up and animating him again. “How do I know you’re not with them? With Rittenhouse?” 

“Because--” Dammit, he was right. This sad tacky bar wasn’t the place for this conversation. Five minute walk to the cathedral, he’d said? “Because I’m fighting them too. I have been for years. And I want to help you.” She hefted the bag. “I know you’ve been on the run for two weeks already. I have a passport, money, things to help you.” She nodded towards the door. “Can we go talk somewhere quieter?” The bar was mostly dead, true, being as it was barely an hour or so before dawn at this point, but there were still a few other patrons there nursing drinks or the beginning of a hangover. “You can kill me after I’m done if you don’t believe me,” she challenged him.

A man with nowhere to go and no hope, he’d told her. So he inclined his head towards her, tipped the glass upside down to indicate he was finished, and said, “Well, the way I see it, ‘Lucy Preston’, we have two possibilities here. Either you’re telling the truth and this gets interesting...or you’ll end up shooting me in an alley.” He gave an awkward half-shrug, throwing his arms out in the gesture of puzzled exasperation he had. “So either way, really, that’s problem solved for me.” 

When he stood, she saw how his clothes hung on him. Whatever he’d been able to steal since fleeing from Baltimore, most likely, and off-the-rack clothes for a man that tall were often too large, as they’d found back in her own time. But beneath the stubble, the lines of his face were etched sharper than usual. Between grief and being a fugitive, he likely hadn’t eaten much in two weeks either. Good thing she’d thrown some rations in the bag at Garcia’s suggestion. 

She followed him through the door to the alleyway, and heard the _click_ of a safety as he passed through the frame. Pushing him aside and turning to her seven, pistol already in hand, she took the shot. He might have been three drinks deep, and not fully on his game besides, but after she confirmed the agent was now a crumpled body on the filthy ground with a neat hole in his forehead, she turned and saw he had his Glock out all the same. He looked at her, eyebrows rising. “I heard you take your gun out behind me. Thought you were taking that idea of shooting me in an alley literally.”

 _And you didn’t care, did you?_ She reached down, grabbed the Rittenhouse agent’s gun, not looking at them too closely. She didn’t need another dead face in her dreams. There were already too many. She stuffed the gun in the duffel bag--Flynn, she had to think of this man as Flynn because Garcia was in the Lifeboat and he was hers, and it hurt too much to see Garcia shattered and in pain like this. _Flynn_ could use that gun. “He’s Rittenhouse. I knew he was waiting out here for you.”

He shook his head in amazement as she handed him the bag. “Who _are_ you? CIA?”

The streets were quiet as she led him towards the cathedral, though he kept almost a little too close, like a boy clinging to the only thing familiar and safe. The side door was unlocked, just as Garcia said it would be. There were a few dim lights on in the chancel, near the altar. She gestured him to sit in one of the pews beside her, and took a moment to glance around. She was no architect, and it had been years since she’d read _Pillars Of the Earth_ anyway, but the towering stone columns, the grace and dignity and sheer grand scope of this place, felt right.

He barely looked around the cathedral, but she had the sense the silent gravity and solemnity of this place fell on him all the same. She hadn’t felt that air for a while, but it reminded her of her churchgoing after her car crash, after being saved by some man she didn’t know. Her own personal miracle--of course she’d looked for answers. She’d fallen away from it some in the years since, but it left its mark on her all the same. This was where things _happened_ , where people went seeking answers, the place the mystery of everything was somehow made more real, yet left even more mystery unfolded beyond the understanding of mortal minds. They had crossed from the ordinary world into the unseen, the territory of faith.

He looked at her expectantly, the worshiper waiting for the priest to begin the Mass. “Who the hell _are_ these Rittenhouse people?” he asked, voice hushed. “All I had was a name and a fat bank account. I don’t know anything about what it means.”

“Garcia,” because she had to use his first name now, “do you remember what project Rittenhouse was funding at Mason Industries? The Caymans transactions you sent to Jim Neville?”

It said something that he’d already entered into the mystery enough to not question just how she knew everything she did; that he was willing to wait for his answers. It took Flynn a moment, his bleary eyes sharpening with internal focus. “Time travel.” His gaze snapped to hers. “You’re joking. I figured it was a pipe dream right there with flying cars.”

She shook her head. “I’m not joking. You had a horse in the Caucasus Mountains when you were fighting with the Chechen rebels. You named her Dynamite, because you loved Tex Willer comics when you were a kid, and you were protecting people by helping them fight for their freedom.” She breathed in deeply, meeting his stunned eyes. “Your friend Danilbek Idrisov teased you about it, but he came to see you when you were wounded to tell you that Dynamite would be OK. Because he knew that you were more worried about the horse than your own injury, and that’s when you knew you were in love with Danil.” She’d known she couldn’t just recite things from his file. She needed something that only Flynn had told her. “I know because you told me all that.” Those nights in the bunker and so many personal confessions--it had been quite the start. 

He sat, still silent and intent on her, obviously wanting to make sense of something that might break him free from the hell he was currently living. The struggle within her to not say too much, but to give him enough, almost overwhelmed her. “Rittenhouse is a shadow organization already influencing American events and political policy. And they want to fund Mason’s time machine so they can go back in history and affect things even more directly. You told me about Danil and Dynamite, because you and I are going to be partners one day. We’re going to fight Rittenhouse together.”

“Time travel--does that mean--” He blinked, shook his head slowly, incredulously. Licked his lips nervously and asked in a voice barely above a whisper, “I’m only still here,” and she knew all too well he meant _here on this Earth_ rather than _here in Brazil_ , “to try to hunt down the people who did it, but...you’re telling me that can I get my wife and daughter back? Somehow?”

It hurt somewhere deep in her chest to hear his desperate hope, to remember when all he could think about was restoring Lorena and Iris, that he’d brushed off her asserting that they were partners without even thinking that maybe they’d be far, far more. She wanted to tell him that she, and the child they’d have, were his family now, that he’d been able to move on and love again. But it was too much for a man currently drowning, and it would be cruel besides. “Anything is possible,” she said as gently as she could. 

His voice thick, he nodded towards the crucifix behind the altar and said, “I prayed, you know. One of those pointless things you do when there’s nothing else left.”

“What did you pray for?”

“For him to take it back. Somehow.” He laughed wildly, head tipping back, arms spread over the back of the pew. “So stupid. He allowed them to be slaughtered, and there I was, begging him for a miracle even as I’m stitching myself up out in the woods with a suture kit I stole from a Walgreens.” She’d seen those scars, and all the others.

She leaned in, filling his vision. _Focus on me._ “Then maybe I’m here to bring you that miracle. But it won’t be easy. Some of it will be the hardest things you'll have ever done.” Leave him with more scars on his soul that he carried still. 

Another of those half-laughs that told her that if anything, the barest glimmer of hope might be what could finally drive him over the edge. “I’ve never been afraid of hard work, Lucy Preston. If you know me, you know that.” 

“Do you believe me?”

“It’s insane.” But his eyes flared with hope all the same, and equal terror at that hope. “You and I--we’ll work together on this?” 

“It will be a little while, because the time machine isn’t ready yet. But I know what Rittenhouse did to you, and what they took from you.” She reached out and dared to put a hand on his shoulder. “You’re not alone. I promise you that.” 

That did it, and she watched something in his expression crumple, mingled relief and unbearable sorrow washing across his features, and he made a sound low in his throat that she recognized for the sob it was. He’d been on the run for two weeks, occupied with just the basics of getting by, staying hidden, not able to move even beyond a half-baked notion of somehow getting his revenge on an organization powerful enough to order the murder of an NSA asset and his family as easily as flicking over a chess piece. He hadn’t wept for them yet. He hadn’t had the space to give way to his grief, but with the promise that it would be all right, that he wasn’t going to bear it alone, it was all crashing down on him now.

She’d never heard him cry like this before, the great shuddering racking sobs of a man with his heart torn out and nothing but exhausted emptiness left in its space. She put her arms around him, pulling him in close, feeling his hands clutch helplessly at her. He’d held her like this once, the day it all fell apart around them. _Flynn...I can’t...I can’t…_ “You can get through this,” she whispered to him, her cheek pressed against his hair, feeling his tears hot against her neck, holding him as tightly as she could, daring to risk pressing a kiss to his brow because she couldn’t bear to do otherwise. It would have to be enough human contact and hope to get him through the next two years. “You will.”

Eventually, his weeping died down to the occasional small hiccuping sob. The first rays of light began to filter in through the windows, so they must have been there for a while. When his grip on her finally eased, she reached into her pocket and pulled out the journal. He roughly wiped his red-rimmed eyes with the back of his hand and looked at it. “Read it. I wrote down everything I can give you in order to help you.”

“But not everything you know,” he said, a ghost of that wry smile on his face. “Of course.”

“You’re a covert ops agent, so you know all about need-to-know,” she told him, gently teasing. “Someday...I look forward to being able to tell you everything, OK? But that’s not now. Too much is at stake.” So much she could tell him, tell him how to avoid almost losing himself to the darkness. The journal didn’t tell him how to carry out the missions, only the historical information and then all the things about her to keep him going. He’d had to guess and extrapolate, and his first efforts were appalling both morally and in terms of mission spec-- _Jesus Christ, Garcia, how were we supposed to think anything but that you were a terrorist trying to take down America? Could you have been more excessive and dramatic about it?_ He’d still been mistaken in how he went about it later, but he’d gotten less sloppy, more surgical, totally focused on taking out identified targets rather than simply trying to smoke the Rittenhouse roaches out by throwing dramatic history-rupturing actions at them.

He reached out and took the journal, handling it with all the cautious care of a block of C-4. His fingers brushed hers. “Read it,” she urged him again. “You’ll need it.” 

Licking his lips again, he nodded, and carefully tucked the journal away. He looked around the cathedral, seeing the light making the pale stone into a well of light. A man struggling, both burdened and cleansed all at once. She debated it, and decided that she could give him one last miracle to hold him over for two years. So she stood, reaching a hand out to him. “Come with me? Let me show you one last thing.”

He followed her, trusting her. It felt strange to not hear him teasing her, making some kind of light conversation to fill the time. Him and his awkward jokes--for a man who’d left home so young and spent most of his life fighting, he hadn’t necessarily developed delicate social skills. But he was there, and he’d see this through. Fifteen minutes’ walk took them to an abandoned apartment building, and climbing in through the broken window, she called ahead in Klingon, “He’s with me, so stay in the Lifeboat and don’t let him see you.” Damn Garcia and his multitude of languages, teasing her with it in bed, so of course she had to pick one to learn solely because he didn’t know it. Then of course he had to learn it just to mess with her, and then they’d all learned it anyway because virtually nobody knew Klingon and it made for a good tactical advantage in the field. 

“What, don’t let me see me?” Garcia answered back flippantly, likewise in Klingon. She rolled her eyes, wanting to strangle him. He switched to English, as she watched him actually climbing out from the Lifeboat, landing lightly on the dusty floor. “Lucy, c’mon. It’s fine. No timelines were harmed by me seeing that you’re right.”

Flynn, crawling through the window behind her, startled at the sound of his own voice. He looked at Garcia, then down at her, astonished. “You weren’t kidding.”

She would have expected Garcia to be more glib and make fun of this situation, but given the solemn look he gave to his 2014 self, obviously he remembered all too well the man he’d been on the other side of this equation. He caught Flynn's eye and gave him a knowing nod. “She wasn’t. Now you know.”

Flynn asked Garcia something in rapid-fire Croatian, agony in his expression. She caught the words _žena i kći_. She knew the first word, given he’d said it, purred it, whispered it to her. The latter, she could guess. _Wife and daughter_. Not hard to figure out what he’d asked, figuring his future self wouldn’t lie, would know the burning need to know for sure.

Garcia paused for a second, and answered back, his tone soft. “ _Da,_ ” and something else after that. He’d lied? No, he’d told himself what he needed to hear. 

She turned back to Flynn. “So, uh, this is our time machine. But...we need to go.” She hesitated, reluctant to just leave him there, especially knowing the next time he saw her, their interaction would be far less warm. Well, except for the raging inferno less than a hundred feet away. “Take care of yourself, Garcia. I’ll see you soon.” She paused, debated giving him one last hug. But she had the sinking feeling they'd already shown him too much, given how she remembered he'd always seemed to know more than he should, and there was plenty he hadn't said to her. "When we meet again, don't tell--uh--me about all of this." She waved at the Lifeboat and Garcia. "Your seeing him especially. Just say I gave you the journal in the bar. That keeps it simple." Even that had been enough to blow her mind back in the day.

He nodded at that, sticking his hands in his pockets and watching them get into the Lifeboat. She watched as long as she could, watching the face of a man slowly kindling a small spark of hope. The door slid shut, and as she sat down, she glanced over at Garcia, sitting down in the pilot’s seat.

“That was another thing you didn’t tell me. That I’d bring you back here, and you’d decide to pull a doppelganger stunt with yourself.”

“You needed to figure it out yourself rather than just have me hand you a script. It was you being you, Lucy. I wouldn’t have trusted you otherwise. Consider it my own little journal for you.” He gave her a self-satisfied smile. “You know the meaning of need-to-know.” 

He'd been waiting to use that for eight years. She could tell. She gave a snort of exasperation, reaching for her harness buckles. “You’re impossible.”

“You knew that when you married me. Though I’ll tell you that ever since that day--the way I looked at you, plus I thought I saw myself wearing a different wedding ring.” He shook his head, laughing to himself. “That sentence is enough to give anyone a headache. I thought maybe it was all the lingering alcohol, but I wasn’t quite sure. But that, and the way you were with me, and then I read how much you told me about yourself in the journal. And I had to wonder.”

“What did you tell him--yourself--?” Great, now he had her doing it too.

“I remember that I begged that future me to tell me if I’d save my wife and daughter. So today I told him he would. That it would be OK in the end.” He looked at her, giving her that soft smile of his. “I didn’t lie. I’ve saved you a few times, and well--you know I’ll fight to save her.” 

“Daughter?” Something opened inside her, a pressure eased.

“I had to make an assumption for the sake of the moment,” he quipped lightly. His voice went low and husky, a tidal wave of emotion behind it. “A boy would be just fine. But...Lucy, I’d love a little girl too.”

The reassurance meant more than she could say right then. She blamed the tears suddenly prickling in her eyes on the hormones. Had to be just the hormones, right? “You’re really OK with it?”

He pressed the button, and she felt the stomach-jolting lurch of the Lifeboat launch into space. Flynn presumably was still there, watching them go. God, she hoped she wouldn’t lose what little she’d eaten yesterday. “I can’t say I won’t have memories sometimes. A few moments.”

He’d had them with Lorena too, but they’d gotten through it. She gave a watery chuckle. “Great, we can both be moody together, because I’m going to be a giant ball of emotions. But she’s not a threat to Iris’ memory. I know she can’t ever be replaced.” 

“You know I was the replacement child for Gabriel. She won’t be.” His tone went fierce at that. “She’ll be her own person to me, always.” His voice gentled again. “But...if you’d like, I wouldn’t mind naming her Amy.”

En route back to 2022, caught between time, everywhere and nowhere at once, anything seemed possible in that moment. They’d go back and save Rufus. They’d rescue Jessica, and Wyatt’s daughter with her. They’d take down Emma. They’d make a better world for this new Amy. She reached out and took his hand in hers. “Amy it is.”


End file.
